Wow, my doctor NEVER double-books! Sometimes I've had almost an hour wait if the appointment is very late in the day and they've gotten behind, but this is rare and always comes with profuse apologies! Five hours is untenable. I would write a letter of complaint.
Oh COOL! I was just telling Prairieson last night that we need to take a look at that one. There was another he wrote that sounded promising, too.
It's so neat that Prairieson is an avid reader. We're always swapping books. I love and adore my ex, but he never read fiction or read for pleasure. That was very hard for me to comprehend.
So I get to the office and I am the ONLY ONE in the waiting room. I check in. I wait. The woman at the desk calls me over and nags me about an overdue bill. I tell her she's nuts. Pretty much in those words, too. We have a PPO and a $15 copay. She's waxing psychotic over a $222 balance. I tell her she's gonna have to figure it out because I have every receipt from every visit for the last five years in my purse because I know how skanky their bookkeeping is. LOL!
She glares. She pokes the receipts. She grumbles. I look at her face and see that the muscles in her face are in a permanent frown position. I wonder if the smile muscles have atrophied. She wants me to leave the receipts with her. I laugh. She says she needs them. I say I need them more and she can make copies while I watch, if she likes. She says she doesn't have time for that. I say I don't have time to wait around for a supposedly double-booked doctor, but that we all do what we must.
I gather up my receipts, shove them in my Beadgirl bag :-) and start reading a magazine article about which young stars have had plastic surgery.
Amazingly, my name is called. I go back. Get weighed (ugh.). The nurse talks to me, then scolds me about not calling 911. She does an EKG. Doc comes in mere minutes later. I do love the doc, and that's why I put up with his antediluvian office protocol.
He scolds me, then says we're going to do a chest x-ray to rule out blood clots in my lungs or something. Then he says I need to see a cardiologist ASAP. He faxes the consult request to them while I wait. He tells me to take it easy. "No. Seriously Deb. I mean take it easy. Not YOUR version of take it easy. I mean really take it easy, ok?"
I get my flu shot. He writes me up some Rx refills and a couple of new ones. Tells me to quit smoking. Again. We set a follow-up appointment for the
16th.And that is all I know. That and the fact that I am really glad to be home.
Don't bother with Digital Fortress -- it's his very first book and it's not particularly good. Deception Point is quite good, though nothing like Angels and Demons or Da Vinci Code.
Elise
Glad you mentioned this, as it was Digital Fortress that I was kind of looking forward to. Think I'll try to get my hands on Angels and Demons. Thanks!
Let me recommend one I just finished, then: "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kin Stanley Robinson. This is sort of an alternate-history book, but a very ambitious one. The beginning premise is that instead of killing 30% of the European population as happened in our universe, the Black Death epidemic took out something over 90% of Europe. This completely removes Christianity from the board as a major player; China and the Islamic empire step in to fill the gap early on, and later India and the New World native peoples are also influential. The whole thing is framed in a concept from Buddhist philosophy: that groups of souls (called jatis) journey thru their repeated lives together, finding each other and striving for enlightenment. The author makes it easy to figure out who's who -- characters who are the same soul all have names starting with the same letter, which would of course not necessarily be the case in real life. The book as a whole covers about 500 years.
The first part of the book is rather a slow read, but after about the halfway point the pace picks up. Having read it, I now completely understand why it was nominated for a Hugo this year. (It didn't win, though.) I also learned quite a bit about various Eastern philosophies, which was interesting.
Celine
To which my response would have been, "Then I'm not being paid enough, and I want a raise commensurate with these extra responsibilities."
Celine
That sounds SMASHING! Kind of like an alternative "Pillars of the Earth", one of my favorite books. I need to get my hands on this one, for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks!
I looked this one up on Amazon. You know how they always suggest a second book to go with the one you're looking at? Well the one they suggested to go with "The Years of Rice and Salt" was "The Kiln People". LMAO! As if the name wasn't good enough, here is the blurb:
Just about everyone's had a day when they've wished it were possible to send an alternate self to take care of unpleasant or tedious errands while the real self takes it easy. In Kiln People, David Brin's sci-fi-meets-noir novel, this wish has come true. In Brin's imagined future, folks are able to make inexpensive, disposable clay copies of themselves. These golems or "dittos" live for a single day to serve their creator, who can then choose whether or not to "inload" the memories of the ditto's brief life. But private investigator Albert Morris gets more than he, or his "ditective" copies, bargain for when he signs on to help solve the mysterious disappearance of Universal Kilns' co-founder Yasil Maharal--the father of dittotech.
Let me recommend one I just finished, then: "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kin
Stanley Robinson. This is sort of an alternate-history book, but a very ambitious one.>
ewwww- I bought that book - and thought it was horrendous - kept reading it hoping it would get better.
Anybody want my copy - you are welcome to it! Cheryl of DRAGON BEADS Flameworked beads and glass
I'll take it!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!
Another that I read shortly after the Da Vinci Code and thoroughly enjoyed (though it's very different) was The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper . It's a hoot.
I wholeheartedly recommend *anything* written by Sherri Tepper. I've been reading her stuff for years and have rarely been disappointed. Her alternate universe stuff is so intriguing and believable!
Mj
vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from snipped-for-privacy@mindCHEMISEspring.com (Lee S. Billings) :
]>]"Your lack of planning does ]>]not constitute my emergency." ]> ]>and my boss came back with "yes, it does. that's what you're paid ]>for." of course, i WASN'T paid to be an emergency handler, i was a ]>secretary, but that's the way he saw it. ] ]To which my response would have been, "Then I'm not being paid enough, and I ]want a raise commensurate with these extra responsibilities."
tried that - no help. anywhere. even tried my union reps. never got anywhere. the fact that i was working waaaaaaaaaaay beyond my job description never mattered either. it finally drove me over the edge.
----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)
vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Tink" :
] The nurse talks ]to me, then scolds me about not calling 911.
obviously not the lady who makes appointments. did you TELL them about the response you got?
]He scolds me, then says we're going to do a chest x-ray to rule out blood ]clots in my lungs or something. Then he says I need to see a cardiologist ]ASAP. He faxes the consult request to them while I wait. He tells me to take ]it easy. "No. Seriously Deb. I mean take it easy. Not YOUR version of take ]it easy. I mean really take it easy, ok?"
BINGO. so are you listening?
]We set a follow-up appointment for the ]16th. ]And that is all I know. That and the fact that I am really glad to be home.
???????? how soon are you seeing the cardiologist? did he tell you what the EKG and x-ray showed? **sigh** girl, were you listening? do you understand now why we worry?
----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)
GREAT word. You get great word points.
Tink -- gut feelings from all over RCB said that you needed to do this and do it now. Thank you for keeping the appointment. When do you see the cardiologist?
Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows
OK, I am NOT suggesting this as a cure to the problem, LOL. But I once worked for a man who had me send a bill for $375 to his doctor's office for making him wait 2-1/2 hours past the time of his appointment. He said he understood that emergencies occur, but that he charges $150 an hour for his own time and that wait caused him to lose $375 in income. LOL. Sorry -- I don't remember what happened, ultimately. It was just such a good response.
Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows
OH LORD NO, you know you would be making one to go to the doctor for you!! LMAO
-- too, too funny!
Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows
I didn't get the original post - can someone repost it????
office for making him wait 2-1/2 hours past the time of his appointment.<
Someone wrote a book about how he became a millionare by doing a few little things -- this was one of them, LOL. Some of his bills were contested, but he ultimately won in small claims court.
Carol in SLC My newest creation (11/28):
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